17 Nov – Occupy London in solidarity with the Greek movement for real democracy

November 17th 1973: Greek people stood up against the military dictatorship

November 17th 2011: Greek people are standing up against the dictatorship of financial markets

Occupy London and the Tent City University invite you to attend an event on Thursday 17th at 8:00 pm, to shed light on the current situation in Greece through films and open discussions.

In November 1973, thousands of Greek students and workers occupied the Athens Polytechnic University to overthrow the United States-backed military dictatorship. During the night of November 17th 1973 and after a series of events starting with a tank crashing through the gates of the Polytechnic, the revolt ended in bloodshed. Despite their suppression, the dictatorship was overthrown one year later.

Thirty-eight years later, the people of Greece find themselves under a new, more subtle form of undemocratic regime: that of the financial markets.

The country’s Constitution has been torn into pieces to accommodate the interests of financial institutions and the unelected Mr Lucas Papadimos, former vice-president of the European Central Bank, has been appointed the country’s new Prime Minister.

Through Greek bailouts, banks’ private debt has been transformed into sovereign debt, mainly for the French and Germans taxpayers, while savage austerity measures enforced by the EU and the IMF have impoverished the whole Greek nation.

Everywhere across Europe and the USA, governments impose austerity measures to ensure that banks do not take any of the losses or responsibility for fuelling a credit boom with increasingly risky loans, while nations go bankrupt.

The level of austerity imposed on Greece is unprecedented by Western standards,has shut any opportunity for economic recovery and preludes to the complete social destruction of the nation which is likely to take place in other European countries too.

31 Responses to “17 Nov – Occupy London in solidarity with the Greek movement for real democracy”

Its difficult to be Greek and free citizen of this world in general nowadays.

All this propaganda, psychological and physical violence against free thinking citizens will grow until we the people realize that is time to end this hijacking of our democracy .
We see markets and the elite appoint puppet governments and prime ministers in Greece, Italy and elsewhere to avoid true democratic processes . We are getting in the way of their plans, to sell us out to the highest bidder, to keep up slaves of debt.

We need to grow, we need to fight back, to be united. We must, its the only way.

I think you will find that Greece’s problems are down to excessive government borrowing, lying about their borrowing in order to borrow yet more money, and income tax evasion as a national past-time, practiced by everyone from taxi drivers and shop keepers, to doctors and bankers. They are an extreme example of what happens when you don’t live within your means (and borrow fraudulently).

Oh I bet you watched that channel 4 programme didn’t you, Greek for a week or something? You sound like you are just regurgitating information from that show. Why don’t you learn to think for yourself; maybe start by asking ‘Why was that show on last week?’ It wasn’t on when Greece was invited into the euro was it. We are being manipulated to think that the Greek people love taking advantage of us, but like us they probably never had a say, they probably, like us voted for a government that promised a referendum and like us never got one. Democracy Delusion!

Aries – you’ve just made me realise how wrong I was. Greece didn’t borrow a cent and its citizens pay all of their taxes due to the thoroughly efficient and effective tax office. This is just a big NWO conspiracy against Greece instigated by the Rothschilds, Bilderbergers, Jews, and the Lizard People.

The problem does not lay with the people of Greece, it lays with the banks of Greece. The Government is so corrupt that it is no longer able to make unbiased decisions – unfortunately the government is making decisions based on money rather than what is actually best for it’s people. The people elect a government they think will treat them fairly and that will benefit them… the government elected does what’s best for themselves rather then the people who elected them.

That’s right, Greece’s borrowing was excessive. But let’s see it from the lenders point of view for a minute: The lenders (mainly banks) started realising that the risk of losing their money was increasing (esp. after the default of Dubai), so they started charging a higher premium (say 5% instead of 1.7%). This means that the lenders acknowledged that there was a risk; some were willing to take it. (btw, that risk was not acknowledged before the banking crisis of 2008: Greece had been in high debt for many years before that, but the banks kept lending.) High risk means that if you win your earning as high, but the chances you loose are high too. So, they lost. So they lent away to the wrong borrower. Isn’t this the very reason of the financial crisis of 2008 (a.k.a sub-prime mortgage crisis)? Whose fault was that? If you think that it is the people’s fault who borrowed money to buy a house (and now have lost it), maybe you should consider taking the side of the banks openly.

The democratic defiicit is more than just
technocrats taking over in Italy and Greece
(and the lack of proportiona representation
or direct democracy in thel UK, I might add).

Credit Rating Agencies and bond markets are
more powerful than governments in
determining economic policy. There has also
been a transfer of power to bankers,
particularly in central banks.

On The Politics Show on Sunday, business
secretary Vince Cable said about the European
Central Bank, “The central bank has to have
unlimited powers to intervene to support
economies and leading banks to prevent
collapse.”

It is so scary, how are they getting away with this? This is a really good article, it is quite long but quick to read once you get going, the more you read the more you think yeah this is what is going on this is so true but how, have we let them get away with it for so long.http://www.relfe.com/plus_5_.html

I think with the latest rounds of “clearing up protesters” around the world and the current action against OLSX shows now more than ever that we the movement need to show that we are united in our goals.

This show of a united effort is only a start, I would love to look at main stream media in the new year and see every single “occupy” and union walk together in solidarity world wide. Lets start the new year by showing our numbers and give a single message to the world.

>Everywhere across Europe and the USA, governments impose austerity measures to ensure that banks do not take any of the losses or responsibility for fuelling a credit boom with increasingly risky loans, while nations go bankrupt.

In that case, sorry mate, you seem to be on the wrong website. The Canvas Corp do indeed blame Capitalism and also the Banks. In fact, Government too and the Police and wait a minute… Seems they blame everyone….